“Your mom was pretty upset last night.”
Cassie hung her head. She’d expected this conversation and wished Laura would have been by her side. “I know.”
“I’m not saying she was right to react like that, but we were pretty surprised to see you show up on our doorstep.”
“Disappointed?”
“Surprised.” His tone was firm. “Big difference. We’re happy you’re here, but I guess what we’re both wondering is why now?”
Cassie took a slow sip of her coffee. She didn’t want to say anything she would regret. “I wish I could tell you. I’ve wanted to visit a hundred times over the years, but I’d get scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“That you hated me.” Tears stung Cassie’s eyes, and she looked down at her bare feet. The chill of the concrete numbed her skin. “That you didn’t want to see me.”
“If you’re looking for forgiveness, you had that years ago.” Walter didn’t change his posture, but his voice was gentler now. “We never hated you, Cassie, not even once. It hurt both your mother and me when you pushed us away, but we knew you had gone through an incredible trauma. People react in all sorts of ways. We would never blame you for how you handled it. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt us, too.”
“I know.” Her voice came out as a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
Walter crossed the garage and kissed Cassie on the forehead. “We all could’ve done better. Your sister knows that. Your mother knows that.”
“Does she?”
He chuckled. “You two are more alike than either of you wants to admit.”
“I’m getting that impression.”
Walter returned to his workbench and grabbed a bucket of stain and a brush. He walked over to the decorative staircase and popped the lid off the pail. “She sees it, too, but she’s fighting for everything to be normal right now. She thinks you only came back because you think she’s dying.”
Cassie rolled her eyes. “That’s not why.”
“But you have to admit that’s what it looks like.” He paused his painting to look up at her. “She wants you to be here more than anything, but she doesn’t want it to be because you feel guilty or think you won’t have another chance. She wants you to be here because you want to be here.”
“I do want to be here.” Cassie heard the whine in her voice and cringed. “Is she going to believe me when I say that?”
Walter shrugged and returned to the staircase. “I can’t answer for her. We all have a lot to talk about. And I think everyone has a lot of work to do. We’ve ignored the separation between us for too long. Band-Aids covered what was festering underneath. Now it’s time to clean the wound and let it heal.”
“That’s going to be painful.”
“Can I give you some advice? From an old man who’s made a lot of mistakes?”
Cassie set down her coffee to better absorb every word. “I’d like that.”
He stared up at the ceiling to find his words. “Don’t ignore the pain. You understand better than most how much life can throw at you. How much it can hurt. But when you ignore the pain, you ignore the solution. You have to feel the pain to figure out what’s wrong. Then you have to put in the work to fix it.”
“It sounds so easy when you say it like that.”
He chuckled and returned to his work. “Oh, it’s not. But the best things in life rarely are.”
The door opened and Cassie’s mom stood in the frame, looking between her husband and her daughter. Her face was inscrutable, and Cassie wondered how much of their conversation she had heard.
Judy took in Cassie’s pajamas and her half-empty cup of coffee. “When you’ve got a minute, will you help me with something?”
“Yeah.” Cassie stumbled over her words. “Of course. Right now?”
“When you’ve got a minute. No rush.”
That strange formality still hung in the air between them, but Cassie didn’t have time to analyze it. Her mom had already retreated into the house.
8
Cassie drained her mug in three gulps and brought it inside. Her mother was chopping vegetables for an omelet with her back to her. The smell of onions mixed with the coffee. It wasn’t an unpleasant scent, but Cassie’s stomach didn’t quite rumble.
Rather, it tightened at the memory of the woman whose kitchen had smelled like sour onions. Not for the first time since that encounter, Cassie wondered if she had gone to the doctor. And if she had, did they find signs of stomach cancer?
Cassie sniffed the air again, hoping she didn’t catch the scent of sickness on her mother.
“Did you eat breakfast yet?” Judy asked.
Having only distinguished the additional smell of the peppers, Cassie breathed a sigh of relief. “Does coffee count?”
“Not really, no.”
“I’m okay for now.” Cassie waited for her mother to say something else, and when she didn’t, she took matters into her own hands. “What did you need help with?”
“While I was cleaning out the sewing room, I came across some boxes with your name on them. I think it’s stuff from when you were a kid. I was hoping you’d go through it. Tell me what you’d like to keep and what I can donate.”
“Oh.” Whatever Cassie had thought her mother needed her help with, it wasn’t this. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed. “Yeah, I can do that.”
“They’re sitting in front of the closet. You can’t miss them.”
It felt like a dismissal, and Cassie had no interest in disobeying it. The strange charge between them that kept Cassie at arm’s length was uncomfortable, and she was much better equipped at avoiding discomfort than pushing through it. After a beat of silence, Cassie turned and headed back upstairs. She passed Laura on the way, who gave her a sleepy nod as she followed her nose to the coffeepot.
Cassie pushed open the door to the sewing room and stepped into her mother’s haven. This room told her more about her mother’s mental state
